In J&K, the biased system disregards human rights of minorities

Jammu & Kashmir is indeed one of a few states in India where those who control and misuse the system overtly and covertly support those who consider the religious and ethnic minorities -- Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists -- as social groups whose life is not one of social, economic, cultural and political aspirations. It is a system that is tightly controlled by one religious sect and all other communities and social groups are at its mercy. Actually, it was the Congress and its supreme leader and fake secularist Jawaharlal Nehru who conspired against the people of Jammu & Kashmir in the 1940s and handed down to the well-known anti-minority and ultra-communal Kashmiri leadership a system under which it would exercise absolute, unbridled and extraordinary legislative, executive and financial powers, sans any accountability and responsibility, and deprive the minorities of their natural rights, including the right to lead a dignified life and have an equal and an effective say in the governance as part and parcel of the state polity. In fact, Jawaharlal Nehru & his coterie deliberately drove Jammu & Kashmir away from the national mainstream through a divisive and undemocratic Article 370 to pander to communal forces in Kashmir and empower them to rule the state in the manner they wanted. He subverted the cardinal principles of democracy to render the minorities unreal and ineffective for practical purposes. There should be no doubt about it.The Nehru Government, which had also hatched a conspiracy against the nation at the behest of the then Wazir-e-Azam of Jammu & Kashmir Sheikh Abdullah and the nominated Governor-General of India Lord Mountbatten to enable Pakistan to consolidate its aggression in the so-called Azad Kashmir and strategic Gilgit-Baltistan region, which were legitimately Indian by any yardstick, drove the people of Jammu & Kashmir away from the national mainstream in October 1949, when the Congress-dominated Indian Constituent Assembly adopted Article 306-A (Article 370) to satisfy the sectarian urges of Sheikh Abdullah and his associates, all too well known for their bias against non-Muslim minorities as well as other religious and ethnic minorities, including the Shiite Muslims, the Gujjar and Bakerwal Muslims and the Pathowari-speaking Muslims, also wrongly called “Paharis”. Ever since then, the Kashmiri ruling elite and its handful of supporters in Jammu province and Ladakh region have been violating ruthlessly the human rights of the religious and ethnic minorities in general and Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist minorities in particular. The ruling elite in the state is backed to the hilt by the “secular” Congress and similar other Left-oriented outfits, which are guided solely by the communal and vested interests of the sect-in-power since October 1947, when the state acceded to Indian Dominion in terms of constitutional law on he subject.It is important to note that religious and ethnic minorities in the state constitute more than 70 per cent of the state’s population but which, very sadly, constitute the most neglected, persecuted, oppressed, neglected and abandoned lot in the entire country. It would not be wrong to say that the political system under which the state has been governing since 1947 is of one sect, by one sect and for one sect (read Kashmiri-speaking ethnic Sunnis). It may appear ridiculous and unbelievable, but it is a fact that it is this sect that controls the government and leads all or nearly all the “mainstream” and separatist organizations. The “mainstream” organizations that this sect leads include the Congress, the National Conference, the People’s Democratic Party, the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and so on and the separatist, terrorist and rabidly anti-India and pro-Pakistan organizations which this sect controls include Mirwaiz Umar Farooq’s All-Party Hurriyat Conference, Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s Tehrik-e-Hurriyat, Yasin Malik’s Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front, Shabir Ahmad Shah’s Jammu & Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party, Syed Salahuddin’s Hizbul Mujahideen, to mention only few. And it is basically the members of this sect who are involved in subversive and anti-India activities as also in activities which frighten the minorities, violate their human rights with immunity and force them to think in terms of migrating to places outside the Valley.The conversion of Kashmir, which was hundred per cent Hindu some eight hundred years ago and which became a virtually 100 per cent Muslim region in the early 1990 with the forced migration of the miniscule and unprotected minority community of Kashmiri Hindus and thousands of Sikhs from Kashmir to Jammu and other places in the country needs to be viewed in this context, as also in the context that the system in Jammu & Kashmir is such that excludes the minorities against the Kashmiri-speaking ethnic Sunnis and protects the non-state actors who violate the human rights of the minorities to further their seditionist and patently communal agendas so that the state is br0ught under Nizam-e-Mustafa that has no place whatsoever for the “non-believers” or “Kafirs” in its scheme of things. These minorities migrated from Kashmir to escape their persecution and physical liquidation, protect their religion and culture and lead a dignified life outside the Valley. Similarly, the grant of full citizenship rights to numerous Uyghur Muslim families and their settlement in the Jamia Masjid area of Srinagar in 1952 during the regime of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah and grant of similar rights in 1959 and settlement of several Tibetan Muslims in the same area during the rule of Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad and denial of citizenship rights to the refugees from West Pakistan settled in Jammu province also need to be viewed in the same context. Uyghur Muslims from Xinjiang province and Tibetan Muslims had migrated to Kashmir to escape the wrath of Communist China and Hindus, mostly Dalits, had migrated from West Pakistan, including towns like Sialkot, to Jammu to escape their persecution and physical liquidation at the hands of the ardent believers in the concept of two-nation under which Muslim Pakistan came into being in August 1947. (Pakistan consists of parts of British Indian provinces where there was no demand for Pakistan. Nehru and Gandhi rejected outright the sane counsel of Dr B R Ambedkar that if Pakistan was to be created out of India, then there had to be exchange of population to the maximum extent. If the Hindu-Muslim problem was to end permanently, then there had to be exchange of population, he had said.)

Likewise, the gross neglect and deprivation of Jammu province and Ladakh region and the widespread discontent and dissatisfaction among the people of these two regions have also to be viewed in this context. They are not considered citizens in the real sense of the term. They are considered as subjects whose only duty is to pay all kinds of taxes and suffer at the hands of those who control the system. It’s no wonder the people in these politically marginalized and economically deprived regions are putting forth demands ranging from statehood to regional council to Union Territory status for their regions, saying reorganization of the state polity on a regional basis is the only panacea available to end their over 65-year-long night of discontent and despair. It is important to recognize ten important facts in order to understand the fundamental reasons which are responsible for the prevailing horrible human rights situation in the state. One, the state policy has been ignoring the impact of genocide and destabilization unleashed by non-state actors against the civilians. Two, institutions are not in place to gather information against violations committed by non-state actors. Three, the state institutions are not sensitized or structured to take suo-motto notice of human rights violations by non-state actors. Four, the state institutions are not structured to educate people about the dangers to the human and civil rights by the violence perpetrated by non-state actors. Five, the state institutions are not ready to defend the integrity of democratic system which is reeling under the impact of violence perpetrated by non-state actors. Six, the state institutions are not even rudimentarily equipped to deal with the propaganda unleashed by violent regimes against the democratic order and the nation. Seven, the state institutions only recognize the over ground workers of secessionist enterprises in India as human and civil rights activists. Eight, there is absence of encouragement to human rights NGOs and bodies who do not have a political agenda. The entire Left support to the human rights violations has been recognized as the legitimate human and civil rights activity. Almost all the human rights organizations, including the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), are under the baneful influence of the Left, which considers India a congregation of over two dozen nations, with each nation having the right to secede. Nine, India is the worst sufferers of terrorism, but, unlike the United States, the United Kingdom and so on, it has no anti-terror law. The Congress-led UPA even abolished POTA to pander to communalists and strengthen and expand its communal constituency. Not to have any anti-terror law is, in fact, an integral component of the Congress’s state policy. Ten, paradoxically, even the Indian foreign policy vis-à-vis Pakistan emboldens the non-state actors to perpetrate barbarities on the minorities with immunity and go scot-free.All in all, it can be said that things would improve in Jammu & Kashmir only if all the provisions of the Constitution of India, barring the atrocious Article 370, are enforced in the state in letter and spirit.﻿